Category: opinion

  • The future of theme development

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    WordPress theme development has come a long way in the past few years. We are in the middle of an explosion in the number of different methods a theme developer can choose when it comes to building WordPress themes. This explosion is partly a result of a seismic shift in the broader web design and…

  • In defense of themeforest

    In defense of themeforest

    I’ve been keeping a close eye on a number of different theme marketplaces recently. As far as WordPress is concerned, to me there are 2 main marketplaces in the ecosystem today. The first and the biggest by some distance in my opinion is the juggernaut that is themeforest (part of envato). The second is the…

  • Hello WooCommerce, Bye bye Jigoshop?

    Hmm…this is an interesting one.  WooThemes have pulled off a pretty spectacular move today and forked Jigoshop (our favourite new WordPress eCommerce plugin) into WooCommerce, which will replace it’s heretofore unsuccessful attempts at creating a WooCommerce platform off their own bat. The possibly bigger news is not only have they forked Jigoshop but they’ve brought in the…

  • Should Custom Post Types live outside of themes?

    Should Custom Post Types live outside of themes?

    Wow it’s nearly a month since my last post! My head is still buried in pixel pushing for some new WordPress themes I’m working on – one of which I hope to publicly release in September – more on that in the coming weeks. One thing that has struck me in a big way over…

  • How do you build WordPress themes?

    How do you build WordPress themes?

    I’m knee deep building some new WordPress themes at the moment but am coming up for some air to throw out a question to all you WordPress theme building pros – How do YOU approach building WordPress themes? When I first started building websites Geocities was the platform of choice for anyone who wanted a…

  • Why Shortcodes in WordPress themes suck

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    I’ve just spent the last couple of hours troubleshooting a WordPress problem for a client who uses a commercial WordPress theme. They are a recent new client who worked with a previous designer who selected the theme for them. I’m in the process of building their new site and said I’d help them out with…

  • Time for a refresh

    So March has been super busy for me. As a result, posts have been thin on the ground the past few weeks – sorry folks. One thing that I’ve been itching to do is to refresh themesforge.com. Our current theme is a custom theme we put together around our relaunch back in late 2009. WordPress…

  • What will WordPress look like in 5 years?

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    Here’s a scary thought. It’s just over 5 years since the release of WordPress 2.0.1 – holy moly 5 years! For anyone interested or who’s long enough in the tooth to have been using WordPress back then, here’s a quick reminder of what WordPress 2.0.1 actually looked like. Quaint eh? Sometimes it’s easy to forget…

  • What makes a WordPress theme great?

    Ok so this is something I’ve been thinking about a lot lately. Why is it that some themes take off like a rocket and others which on paper look great never hit the big time? I’m not just talking about premium WordPress themes here either. I’m just talking about themes in general. With so many…

  • Why WordPress needs a vibrant Premium Themes economy

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    While browsing wordpress.org this evening I thought I’d take a dig around the most recent free themes submitted. I gotta tell you guys – what I saw wasn’t pretty! I stopped looking after about the 30th theme going back to late May. I can safely say that of the 3o themes I looked at –…